Are you thinking YA, Barb?

I think it'll work best if you already have a character in mind to hang the story on.

Suppose you stayed beautiful by having an avatar age in cyberspace and then there's a cascading blackout....

I like it! Or the reverse, where you start showing some of the damage of your avatar, and you don't dare stop playing the game or you'll starve/die/etc. (that sounds damned familiar, it must have been done)

Are you thinking YA, Barb?

Dunno, Amy-- it certainly could lend itself to YA, however, if I really want to play up the hedonistic aspect of it, which is one of the things I adore about the original, I think I'd have to take it adult.

Like I said, I'm still in very early stages of playing with the idea-- just waiting for Adrienne to get back to me on the ghost story proposal & the 60s story (for which, I suspect, the news might not be good... just a feeling I have). I'd really, really like to sell an adult novel. Eventually. Someday.

It'll happen.

I really want to play up the hedonistic aspect of it, which is one of the things I adore about the original, I think I'd have to take it adult.

You could do a magical realism take on it, or horror.

I had a thought over lunch. The "Mirror" is not an Avatar, but a real twin. Rich beautiful twin who does not take care of himself narcistically obsessed with his own beauty. Poor beautiful twin who does take care of himself, obsessed with money. Starts with poor twin selling rich one a kidney, then for more money agreeing to skin grafts, donate muscle for muscle grafts. (horror medical science rather than real medical science with sociopathic multi-speciality Hollywood doctor ready to perform all the illegal surgery he is paid for. )

Poor twin gets uglier and uglier, can't hold on to the money so keeps needing more. Rich twin stays rich, or this starts eating into his fortune? Rich twin money depends on beauty? Not the one writing it, but another approach, with lots of room for hedonism.

I wonder what it says about me that I assumed Barb's Dorian would be female.

So did I.

Well Dorian being a woman is a fine variation, and good on Barb if she turns a male character female. Gender flexibility yay!. But actually further from gender stereotype to keep the beauty obsessed character male. Obviously whatever provides the best story.

TB, funny that you mention medical science because one of the variations that had occurred to me was a Dorian Gray meets Frankenstein sort of scenario where, rather than a picture, it's Dorian going to a plastic surgeon who keeps Dorian beautiful and eternally young, but rather than dispose of the parts that are cut away, keeps them and grafts them together. Again, just the brain playing with ideas.

I had actually thought to make Dorian female to turn the original on its head, but the possibility certainly exists to go either way.

I think, too, I know the perfect city in which to set it-- at least part of it-- New Orleans. Around Mardi Gras when there's hedonism and magic in the air... wouldn't it be DELICIOUS?